Brzezinski Warns Mideast Peace Impasse Threatens Israel, U.S.

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The deadlock in the Middle East peace
process is undermining U.S. influence and may pose an
existential threat to America’s key ally Israel, former National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said.

“If this issue continues to fester, the Middle East will
become more anti-American,” Brzezinski said in an interview on
Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,”
airing this weekend. “We are in the process of being pushed
out” of the role as power broker in the region, he said, and
“eventually Israel is going to be fatally threatened” if peace
isn’t achieved.

“There is a way out” of the impasse, said Brzezinski, 83,
who helped broker the Camp David peace accords between Israel
and Egypt under President Jimmy Carter. The Obama
administration, he said, should craft a United Nations
resolution that satisfies both Israel and the Palestinians, and
saves the administration from vetoing the Palestinians’ bid for
statehood recognition at the UN.

An alternative U.S. resolution should welcome “the
existence of a democratic Jewish state in Israel, explicitly, at
the same time saying the Palestinians are entitled to something
similar,” he said.

Negotiations should be resumed on the basis of 1967
borders, Brzezinski proposed. Such a statement, he said, is
something the Israelis “could even vote for.”

Brzezinski, who was an early supporter of Obama in the 2008
Democratic primaries, said the president has failed to play an
active, direct role in the peace process, without which the two
sides are incapable of coming to an agreement.

Arab Spring

Brzezinski suggested the so-called Arab Spring uprisings,
which have so far ousted authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Tunisia
and Libya, have altered the ability of the U.S. to exert
influence in the strategically critical region.

The Middle East is the world’s largest oil-producing region
and holds about two-thirds of proven global oil reserves,
according to the U.S. Energy Department.

Polls show that the Israeli-Palestinian issue looms high in
the minds of the Arab public, Brzezinski said, and U.S.
credibility and authority will continue to wane until that issue
is resolved.

“Until recently, we could ignore that because we dealt
with the governments and not with the publics,” he said. “But
now the publics are becoming more important.”

Brzezinski also criticized the Obama administration’s
policy on Pakistan, saying that comments by the top U.S.
military officer in congressional testimony last week linking
Pakistan’s spy service to an extremist militant group is a
dangerous diplomatic strategy.

Mullen Controversy

Admiral Mike Mullen, who retired yesterday as chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services
Committee Sept. 22 that the violent Haqqani network is a
“veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services
Intelligence. Mullen blamed the Haqqani group, based in a tribal
area of northern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, for
the Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and other high-profile attacks in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sept. 28 said the
U.S. government is in the “final, formal” stage of reviewing
whether to designate the Haqqani network as a terrorist
organization, making it subject to sanctions.

Brzezinski warned that the administration’s public slap-down of Pakistan has “consequences.”

“If we are going to go down the path of publicly
condemning them, we’d better think through how we’re going to
play that game” to U.S. advantage, he said. “I’m not sure I
see much evidence of that.”

Little Leverage

Brzezinski said the U.S. doesn’t “have much leverage” on
the Pakistani government to rein in militant groups. “I’m not
sure we have much strategy right now” for Pakistan and
Afghanistan, he said.

Brzezinski, a native of Poland and a veteran Cold War-era
policymaker, said he wasn’t surprised by the announcement that
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will likely return to the
presidency next year.

“Everybody knew that Putin was the real power” and
current President Dmitry Medvedev is “just a front,” he said,
adding that Putin’s prospective return eliminates hope for
democratic reforms.

The killing yesterday of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American
radical cleric who was a charismatic leader in al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, was a “significant tactical breakthrough”
in the administration’s campaign against the terrorist group,
Brzezinski said. The U.S. says al-Awlaki was an inspiration for
several attempted terror attacks on the U.S., including the
Christmas 2009 attempted underwear bombing and the 2009
shootings at Fort Hood.

Progress on Al-Qaeda

Brzezinski said the U.S. appears to have little influence
to compel Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to halt his violent
crackdown on protests that begin in January.

“Our position in the Middle East is just declining so
rapidly that it’s really appalling,” he said. Fifty years ago,
“we had good relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and
Turkey,” he said, while “we barely have a decent relationship
with some of them now.”

“I deplore the fact that we don’t have a policy” toward
the Middle East, he said. “As a consequence, we are in the
process of being pushed out.”

Mideast Talks

The most urgent concern, he said, is Israeli-Palestinian
peace. Given the history and geography of the dispute, “the two
sides on their own will never reach agreement,” Brzezinski
said. “Each side, of course, will always say the other side is
guilty, doesn’t want really to negotiate” when “in fact, they
can’t do it” given the complexity of the situation.

Peace talks broke down a year ago when Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to renew a partial, 10-month
moratorium on new construction of Jewish settlements in the West
Bank. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says
settlement expansion must be halted before talks resume.

Abbas filed a resolution for UN recognition of a
Palestinian state on Sept. 23. Israel and the U.S. vehemently
opposed the move, and the U.S. vowed to veto the measure, to the
consternation of Arab allies who are supporting the
Palestinians.

The U.S., the UN, the European Union and Russia -- the so-called Quartet for Middle East Peace -- responded to Abbas’s bid
with a statement calling on both sides to return to direct talks
within 30 days and come up with a peace deal within a year.

Obama has “not been willing to move up to the plate” and
lead the two sides to a brokered agreement, Brzezinski said.
Obama’s speech at the UN on Sept. 21 was “extremely limited”
and appeared to validate only the Israeli side, he said.

“As a result, I think the issue is going to get worse
rather than better,” Brzezinski said.